With the portable smartphone market becoming ever more competitive, and HTC emerging as the dominant force, it was inevitable that Sony Ericsson would continue it’s evolution of their highly-acclaimed P-Series Symbian Smartphones.

The latest model, the P1i looks like being the best yet, combining as it does a 3.2-Megapixel camera with a 2.6” TFT display and a wealth of connection options such as Wi-Fi and 3G.

One feature that may seems like a slight departure from the P-Series models of old is the inclusion of a Blackberry-style QWERTY keypad that combines 2 letters in 1 button. To avoid mis-presses, the P1i’s buttons have a small ‘dip’ in the centre which means that the location of each letter is at the raised point of each key. This has clearly been done to create space and more than anything to save the P1i from being too wide and this seems to have worked out very well. Typing on the P1i’s keypad does take a little getting used like anything, but once a few messages have been sent, it soon becomes second nature.

Though the keypad is the only physical controls to be operated from the front of the handset, Sony Ericsson have cleverly added some diversity in the way the P1i operates. With a jog-wheel located on the left-side, and Sony Ericsson’s typical back key directly underneath it, this gives consumers the option to either navigate via the wheel or use the enclosed stylus with the large 2.6” touchscreen display.

Surprisingly for a Smartphone, the speed of the P1i is very good and is clearly down to the integration of a decent processor, which is always a necessity, but some handsets don’t always follow this rule.

One feature that deserves mentioning is the on-board memory of 160MB, which doesn’t seem like much, but when you consider that most normal handsets come with anything between 5MB and around 60Mb built-in this is could prove to be extremely helpful. In addition, the memory can be upgraded with a M2 Memory card up to 2GB, which combined with the on-board memory is very impressive and should be more than adequate for the vast array of data that’s likely to be stored on a phone such as this.

The P1i is unusual for a Smartphone as the built-in digital camera is of comparable quality to dedicated camera phones. With a resolution of 3.2 Megapixels, auto focus and a Macro Mode, you can safely assume that the P1i has the leading camera functionality of most of the smartphones currently available.

With a great build-quality, diverse control features and the usual Symbian smartphone functionality, the P1i, looks like being as good a choice as any models out their from dedicated smartphone manufacturers. Definitely one worth considering.